“I hope readers will be moved by this portrait of love in all its complicated forms,” Yang says of her upcoming novel

NEED TO KNOW

• PEOPLE can exclusively reveal the cover of bestselling author Susie Yang’s next novel
• Thank You, I’m Sorry, out next summer from Scribner, follows a first-generation Chinese-American woman who yearns to create a life for herself
• “What surprised me as I wrote the story of the Yu family was the hope that came through: the gratitude, the tenderness, the forgiveness, the faith in reconciliation,” Yang tells PEOPLE

Bestselling author Susie Yang is putting the first-generation experience to the page in her latest book.

PEOPLE can exclusively reveal the cover of Yang’s next novel Thank You, I’m Sorry, due out next summer from Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

Per a synopsis shared with PEOPLE, Thank You, I’m Sorry centers on Hope, the daughter of Chinese immigrants who was forced to take on a parental role much sooner than anticipated. After her mother leaves and their father becomes unreliable, she’s left in charge of her twin siblings.

As an adult, Hope still carries the ghosts of this burden as she tries to put herself first. She plans to leave her husband, Ralph, and move to New York City to begin a completely different life.

But right as Hope is about to leave, her sister Faye suffers a sudden health crisis. Hope moves Faye into her and Ralph’s home, cementing her back where she started. This time, though, Hope must decide if she will finally embrace the future she’s always needed.

Yang, the author of the 2020 Read with Jenna selection White Ivy, brings elements of her own upbringing to her latest book, she explains to PEOPLE.

“Both my parents spent much of my childhood commuting from another state for work or grad school. They returned home on the weekends or, if they were busy, once a month,” Yang says. “While my brother and I always had grandparents around, I also knew other immigrant kids who essentially lived on their own. Sometimes their parents didn’t even live in the country. So it always seemed normal to me that children could raise themselves, and that the eldest (usually a daughter) would become the primary caretaker of her siblings.”

“I wanted to capture the intensity of that childhood, but also explore what that kind of upbringing does to people over the decades,” the author continues. “What kind of relationship would the siblings grow up to have? How would they feel toward their aging parents, who had been so absent when they were young? How would it shape their capacity for joy, intimacy and trust with a romantic partner?”

While writing, Yang originally considered the book to be a tragedy, detailing the toxicity of “well-intentioned relationships” and the bonds that can make a family. Thank You, I’m Sorry, however, ended up becoming something different.

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“What surprised me as I wrote the story of the Yu family was the hope that came through: the gratitude, the tenderness, the forgiveness, the faith in reconciliation,” the author says. “I hope readers will be moved by this portrait of love in all its complicated forms.”

Thank You, I’m Sorry will be published on June 8, 2027 and is now available for preorder.

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